S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (140 page)

His body had somehow worked its way underneath a pew and become stuck there. He was still shaking, but the violence of the tremors had diminished. The voices in her head also seemed to have lessened.

He's lying, Jessie. He has to be!

She considered the possibility, but then asked herself what his motivation might be. What possible advantage would it give him to tell her that everyone was going to die and that it was all her fault? If anything, it made her less inclined to help him and more apt to just leave him here for the Undead.

“When?” she asked, spinning back to him. He'd slumped and was nearly prostrate on the floor again. His breaths came in short painful gasps. “How long before the contingency sends the order?”

“Can't s-say exactly.” Brother Walter coughed weakly and reached over to take another drink, but the bottle was empty. He was shaking now, and not from weakness. The shivers assaulted his whole body, a sure sign that the infection was spreading beyond the wound in his side. His words were slurring too, making it that much harder for Jessie to understand him. “C-could be soon.”

He winced as he tried to push himself up. It was a mighty struggle, she could see it in the way the tendons on his neck stood out. He was fighting death now, not just the fever. Once again, the stink of his wound assailed her nose.

“You need help.”

“No time.” A wet groan spilled from his lips. “You'll d-develop a headache, and—”

“I know what happens,” she growled. “I've been through it.”

“It might t-take a f-f-few hours, once it starts.”

He's lying, Jessie
, Micah repeated.
We can do it. We can stop this. You just need to get my tablet!

She glanced over at him. Whatever had been agitating him earlier was apparently gone. Was it the beginning of the activation sequence?

“You're right,” she said, getting to her feet.

“I am?” both Brother Walter and Micah replied at the same time.

“I have to try and stop this. If there's a way, I need to find it. I need to get to the codex.”

Terror flashed across Brother Walter's face, and Jessie knew that it was the fear of being left alone, of dying alone. Or, worse still, of being abandoned to die with the Undead for company.

“Don't worry. I'm taking you with me.”

You're crazy, Jess!

“No,” Brother Walter whispered.

“Micah will carry you.”

I will?

“No.”

The front doors rattled. Jessie didn't even spare them a glance. Someone, a woman, whispered inside her head:
You're alive? But—

And then the voice was suddenly gone, leaving an emptiness in her mind that Jessie felt as if it were a physical thing.

She looked up, startled, realizing too late that something really was wrong outside. The whispers which had been plaguing her had gone away, not fading slowly, but leaving her one by one as if each had been snuffed out. Only Micah's remained. She'd been too preoccupied to notice.

Jessie?

“
Shh!
Someone's here.”

She hurried over to the closest window. The ground was littered with bodies.

What's happening?

A crash from the front spun her around. The doors slammed against the walls as they flung open. The board she'd wedged in the handles to keep them closed splintered apart.

Brother Walter stirred.

Jessie?

But she could say nothing. She could do nothing but watch as Jo Vail strode in, pistol raised and aimed straight at her head. The Live Player was covered in blood from head to toe. Jessie's sword was in her other hand, and it was dripping black gore.

Behind her, another figure slipped into the doorway, a silhouette backlit against the bright sunlight outside. Rosie Haycock, Grant's Live Player partner, stepped out of the glare.

Jessie, please tell me.

“Jo,” Rosie called, her voice a low, mean growl. “We agreed how this was going to go down. Let's do this right.”

“Right is ending this now,” Jo replied. “Right the fuck now.”

Brother Walter tried to get to his feet. Without breaking stride, Jo swung her arm to the right. The pistol barked once. Jessie jumped. Brother Walter's body jerked, then crumpled back to the floor, a new flower of red blooming on his shirt just above his heart.

Was that a gunshot? Jessie?

The pistol swung back to her, and suddenly the barrel looked very big and very black. A tendril of smoke drifted lazily out.

“Game over,” Jo said. “Looks like the girls win. Well,” she added, smiling crookedly, “two out of three girls anyway.”

Jessie raised her hand, as if she meant to ward off the bullet.

Jessie? Who's that? Who's here?

Jo's smile faltered as she heard Micah struggle beneath the pew. “Now see?” she said, raising the sword over her head. “That's just a terrible waste of good tape.”

“No!” Jessie screamed. She tried to reach out to stop her and realized she was still holding the book in her hand.

The sword whistled as it sliced through the air, landing deep into the worn wooden church floor, and the last whisper in Jessie's head fluttered away into silence.

 

“I don't know if we should watch this.”

Kelly didn't reply. He seemed lost, in a daze, his eyes glued to the macabre mother-daughter reunion playing out in the back yard.

The dead girl hadn't yet noticed the woman cautiously approaching her. She stood turned to one side, not moving, her head held at a queer angle and her arms dangling just as still and limp as a flag on a windless day. She appeared remarkably clean, with the exception of the mud on her arms and hands and knees.
Well-preserved
, Reggie thought. At least when compared with the other outbreak victims he'd encountered on the island. And her skin was pale white instead of dark and leathery or bleached ash gray. The squiggly lines of her veins, which hadn't pumped blood in over a decade, were still clear on her neck and forehead.

“Come on, Kel,” he said. He was itching to move on, to be free of the woman and her demented idea that she could raise the Undead. The whole situation gave him the heebie jeebies.
She
gave him the heebie jeebies. “We've got stuff to do. Time to go. She doesn't need us anymore.”

Doctor White was slowly closing the distance between herself and the girl, creeping stealthily through the tall, dead grass. Her fingers curled unconsciously around the rusted metal of the swing set's frame and rested there for a moment, as if she were afraid of losing her balance or her tenuous grip on the world. A moment later, she stepped past it and her fingers lost contact, though they continued to hover in mid air by her side.

“Go?” Kelly turned his head slightly toward Reggie, though his eyes didn't shift from the scene. The blank look he'd worn turned to confusion. “But we can't just take off and leave her.”

“If you're worried about that thing eating her—”

“That
thing
is her daughter,” Kelly quietly said, his voice hard. “And, no, I'm not worried about that.”

Reggie was quiet for a moment. “Daughter or not, she's dead.”

“I know.”

Reggie pulled him around so that they were standing nose to nose. “And what she's about to do, or try to do, it doesn't bother you?”

“She has the cure.”

“And she's wasting it on something that's been dead for a dozen years! She's crazy thinking she'll be able to bring her daughter back from this. I mean, how many books do you have to read, how many movies do you have to watch, to know that it won't work? It always —
always
 — goes horribly wrong.”

“Maybe not this time.”

Reggie threw up his hands in resignation. “It's fucking hubris. I want no part of it.”

Kelly shrugged. There seemed to be no urgency in him anymore. He turned back to the glass.

Reggie followed his gaze. The girl had finally noticed her mother. She was turning toward her now, slowly. She opened her mouth, as if in surprise, but Reggie recognized the gesture as the first step in an attack.

Run!
he wanted to shout to the woman, but he just stood there and stared.

And she just stood there too, her arms outstretched, as if to receive in them this horrible, terrifying thing that was no longer the thing she remembered it had once been.

The dead girl stepped forward out of the sunlight, and in that brief moment, she looked very much like a child.

Then she lunged.

Doctor White deftly redirected the tiny, stick-like arms, folding them behind the girl's back. Then, before Reggie could react, could even cry out in dismay, she had the girl face down on the ground with her knee between her shoulder blades.

“Jesus. Looks like she's done that before,” Reggie whispered.

Kelly didn't answer.

So Reggie watched, fascinated despite himself, yet horrified in spite of his loathing for the Undead. The woman bound the tiny zombie's wrists and stuffed a cloth into her yawning zombie mouth.

“She actually truly believes she can bring her back?”

Kelly shrugged.

“Do you?”

“I believe in the cure. I have to.”

“Well, sure. I mean, because of Kyle.”

“And me.”

“But both of you are still alive.” He gestured at the back yard. “That girl? She's been dead for thirteen years, Kel.”

“I wish you'd stop saying that.”

“It'll never work.”

“It might.”

Reggie exhaled in disgust. “Fine. Gimme a sec while I put on my A-brain. Let's say this cure somehow restores a body that's been dead probably twice as long as it was alive. I'm no doctor. I'm not a scientist, but even I know that when cells die, the proteins and everything inside of them break down. It's basic biology.”

“This isn't,” Kelly quietly countered. “Besides, we know they don't decay, not entirely. We know they continue to function. The muscles. Vision. Hearing. All of that stuff. Certain parts of the brain remain intact and functional. So why is it hard to believe that they're still alive in some rudimentary way that we don't fully understand?”

“I'm not just talking about that, Kel. What about her mind? Her soul? Those things died when she died. They're long gone, Kelly. What do you have without a soul? A shell, nothing more.”

“You don't know. Nobody knows what happens. Maybe they're still inside somewhere, trapped.”

“They're not, brah.”

Kelly stepped closer to Reggie. “What if they're just . . . sleeping? Maybe this will wake them up.”

Reggie shook his head. “I understand why you need to believe in the cure, Kel. But this is different.” He sighed. “Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that we need to find Jessie. Every minute we waste here is another minute Arc's Live Players have to get to her before we do.”

But Kelly still didn't move.

“No good can come of this,” Reggie said. “It's just wrong. That girl is long gone, and it's going to drive Doctor White insane when she figures that out.”

“It's already too late,” Kelly whispered, his voice so low that Reggie wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly.

“What?” He shook Kelly. “What did you say?”

“It's too late to leave.” Kelly gestured at the sun, which was hanging low in the sky. “We've only got a couple hours before it gets dark. We'll set out in the morning.”

“In a couple hours we could be at the mainframe. Please, man, I really don't want to witness this. I don't want to see what happens. I can only imagine one possible outcome, and it ain't a good one.”

The girl was now back on her feet, twisting around and trying to get to her mother. Doctor White was carefully but firmly guiding her back to the house, one hand on her bound wrists, the other on her shoulder. Her eyes met Reggie's through the dirty glass and she mouthed: “I need your help.”

He wanted to shake his head no.

Kelly slid the door open, then turned to Reggie and said, “After this. I promise.”

The three of them wrestled the girl into the living room and onto the couch. Dried gore hardened the cushions and made the carpet scratchy. Someone had started to wipe it away, but gave up. There was too much of it.

The little zombie's movements were stiff and slow, yet preternaturally strong. She fought them as they rolled her onto her stomach. Reggie saw only two marks on her skin: a single bite on her right forearm, and another on the back of her left thigh. Neither was deep. Neither showed much tissue damage.

Her skin was as cold as ice and as hard as dense rubber.

“Hold her still,” Doctor White instructed. She pulled her pack to her side and unzipped it braced beneath a knee. The other rested on the girl's head. From inside the bag, she extracted a plastic case about the size of a shoebox. This, she thumbed open.

The girl bucked beneath Reggie. One of her arms worked free and swiped ineffectively at his leg. “What are you going to do?” he asked Doctor White.

“Just hold Cassie still.”

She loaded a large syringe with a viscous pink fluid which she extracted from a small IV bag, then moved to her daughter's side.

“Where's that going?” Reggie asked.

“In her neck.”

But they couldn't hold the girl still long enough for the injection. After a couple tries, Doctor White shook her head. She recapped the needle and set it aside.

“What now?”

Once more she reached into the pack. This time she brought out the EM pistol. “Step aside,” she told them. “Now!”

Unburdened by the boy's weight, Cassie rose from the couch, but she didn't get far before she was flattened by the blast from the pistol. Reggie could feel the tingling of it on his skin and the itchiness in his head, even though he'd been standing well enough to the side to avoid the blast. It was like being next to the Gameland wall.